Nasopharyngeal Microbiota Profiling of SARS-CoV-2 Infected Patients

Flavio De Maio; Brunella Posteraro; Francesca Romana Ponziani; Paola Cattani; Antonio Gasbarrini; Maurizio Sanguinetti

doi:10.1186/s12575-020-00131-7

Nasopharyngeal Microbiota Profiling of SARS-CoV-2 Infected Patients

Biol Proced Online. 2020 Jul 25:22:18. doi: 10.1186/s12575-020-00131-7. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Flavio De Maio¹, Brunella Posteraro², Francesca Romana Ponziani², Paola Cattani¹, Antonio Gasbarrini², Maurizio Sanguinetti¹

Affiliations

¹ Dipartimento di Scienze di Laboratorio e Infettivologiche, Fondazione Policlinico Universitario A. Gemelli IRCCS, Largo A. Gemelli 8, 00168 Rome, Italy.
² Dipartimento di Scienze Gastroenterologiche, Endocrino-Metaboliche e Nefro-Urologiche, Fondazione Policlinico Universitario A. Gemelli IRCCS, Rome, Italy.

Abstract

We analyzed the bacterial communities of the nasopharynx in 40 SARS-CoV-2 infected and uninfected patients. All infected patients had a mild COVID-19 disease. We did not find statistically significant differences in either bacterial richness and diversity or composition. These findings suggest a nasopharyngeal microbiota at least early resilient to SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Keywords: 16S rRNA sequencing; Bacterial community; Nasopharynx; SARS-CoV-2 infection.